It’s been almost seven years since Google acquired the system that we now know as AdSense. You may wonder if the Google AdSense program is still the best way to monetize your blog, or whether it’s even still a viable option.

There’s a famous photo on the web of one AdSense publisher and the $132,000 check he received from AdSense. But that was five years ago. Is it possible to still earn money like that?

To figure that out, let’s look at some of the dynamics that make the game different now.

#1 – There are more AdSense publishers than there used to be.

This is partly due to the fact that it’s easier to blog and easier to incorporate AdSense into a blog. If your blog is hosted on Google’s Blogger/BlogSpot platform, it’s as easy as clicking the “Monetize” link. Fill out the application, get approved, and the platform automatically inserts the ads. You don’t even have to generate the ad code, copy or paste. Having more fish in the pond, but not necessarily more revenue to share, means that everyone takes a bit of a loss, right? Perhaps.

#2 – The economy has suffered, leading to fewer advertising dollars are in the market.

While this may be true, have you seen any less commercials while watching television lately? Didn’t think so. I would argue that while there may be fewer advertisers, there aren’t necessarily fewer advertising dollars. Some companies are aggressively marketing amidst the economic fluctuations that have taken place the past year. They’re trying to ride out the wave of the recession to emerge on top when the markets stabilize. They’re advertising now for where they want to be a couple of years from now.

#3 – The quality of the competition is improving.

This sounds bad, like you’re going to have a harder time competing, right? But this is actually a good thing for you. Here’s what I mean: Some of the more “predatory” fish are being weeded out. Google continues to fine-tune its fraud detection systems, and if you publish legitimate content, that’s good news. The days of unscrupulous publishers creating dummy websites stuffed with keywords to steal all the traffic (and all of the clicks) are coming to an end. In years past, those sites were able to hog quite a bit of the ads in the program, leaving the rest of us with bottom-of-the-barrel ads that no one would ever click. It’s more likely now than before that you will get higher-quality ads, ads that are more directly related to your content, and as a result you’re likely to see better click-through ratios.

#4 – Google Ads are more recognizable.

There are two angles to this. One of those is the perspective that readers become increasingly “immune” to ads, that they have trained themselves to ignore the ads and focus solely on the content. This may be true to an extent, but I think this is where the other perspective comes into play: AdSense ads in particular have become widely accepted in terms of their safety and relevance. If I click a website that shows up in my search results, I have no idea what’s waiting on the other side of that click. And too often, I find either a junk website that was a waste of my time, or worse, a malicious software installer. If I click a Google ad, I know at the very least that someone has paid actual money for me to visit that site, and that the ad itself has passed Google’s review. I might even go so far as to say that I’m more likely to click an ad that I know will take me where I want to go than I am to click a link that might or might not take me where I want to go.

The Bottom Line

If there was no money to be made, no one would still be running AdSense ads on their websites. I suspect that for the vast majority of people who would once have been pulling in tens of thousands of dollars monthly, they’ve seen their returns drop, and I base that on the fact that most of them are trying to make money now by selling their own book or program on how to replicate their success. But there is still money to be made, even if the returns are perhaps a bit more modest.

Although it’s fun to think of getting a $132,000 check from Google, that’s probably on par with winning the lottery these days. On the other hand, earning a decent living wage that allows you to write about something you love, without having to kill yourself trying to outsneak the next guy, is probably more possible now than it was before.